James Gardner

Python + .NET = IronPython and Silverlight and Python

The morning started with two talks about Microsoft technologies, the first was Python for the .NET platform and the second was Silverlight (a technology I’m very interested in) which is kind of like Microsoft’s answer to Flash. Both talks were very disappointing because I didn’t learn anything about either technology which I hadn’t already picked up after a brief read of the project sites and a quick play with the tools. The talks seemed to be more about demonstrating the Visual Studio IDE then getting down to the nitty gritty of what the technologies can be used for or how they work. Shame, because I’m really keen on both technologies.

The Essentials of Stackless Python

I have to admit this went well over my head. So much so that I spent most of the time reading the stackless website and after a while I did more or less understand what what was going on. After the talk was a quick break so I decided to install stackless and have a go at writing a WSGI server for Pylons using it which I eventually got working. Although the stackless server was a lot faster than the paste httpserver with default thread options for consequtive requests, it was a lot worse for concurrent requests so it isn’t a clear-cut thing as to whether a stackless apprach is always better. Either that or my implementation contained bugs!

There wasn’t anything I was particularly interested in for the next session so inspired by Simon’s mention of AuthKit yesterday I pressed on and fixed a few bugs instead and spent some time talking to Graham Stratton and Jeroen Vloothius.

If you can’t beat them … Pythonic explorations of Microsoft Sharepoint Portal Services

This was a great talk which basically reminded me why I should avoid proprietory technologies at all costs. Although Sharepoint has a WebDAV interface it can’t be used to access most documents. As a workaround you can store documents in lists or install IronPython on the Sharepoint server and write code to interface between .NET and your own custom web services API. Neithter seem a great solution but I really appreciated the information and tips in the talk, very useful!

Again, there was nothing too interesting for me in the afternoon so I decided to explore Buildout, which is a tool the Zope community use to fulfil a similar role to the likes of a virtual Python install or a working env only much more sophisticated. I’m currently writing a buildout tutorial for Pylons users which I hope to release fairly soon because it is a great product. During the lightning talks I also had a discussion with Philipp about the Zope and Paste integration. Guido talked about Python 3000 again but I felt I’d already heard most of what he had to say. Personally I’m not too worried about compatibility issues - I will recode anything which needs changing.

In the evening was the conference dinner and because I spent a bit long chatting with Simon Willison and Nat Downe over the wine we couldn’t get a table! This turned out to be quite handy because we sat slightly further away from everyone else and had a chance to discuss some further collaboration including the integration of the Pylons request and response Simon mentioned in his keynote earlier. A few others joined us and before long we were debating all sorts of issues from use of the work “geek” to the implications of religion. Great fun and a long night out in a Vilnius bar followed.

Apple have announced a Safari 3 beta for Windows. The download is 8Mb and should make it easier for people like me to develop websites that work on the Mac version of Safari. I’ve already noticed the 3aims.com site doesn’t render correctly on Safari 3 so that is something I’ll look into.

What’s interesting is that the default install also includes Bonjour (Apple’s network discovery tool) and the Apple Software Update program. Does this mark a new trend of Apple is trying to launch core components on the PC?

It looks like the browser tries to use the Mac fonts but the rendering doesn’t look quite right to me.

Update: Sadly it seems to crash every time I exit with an error “The memory cannot be read”

What is Open Source?

Open source software is software which is distributed together with the source code used to build it so that developers who use the software are free to examine how it works, review it for security issues and contribute improvements. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.

Most open source software is licensed under very permissive terms which allow you to use or distribute it free of charge in commercial projects without having to release your own work publicly. Thousands of companies worldwide support and contribute to open source software including Sun, Novell, IBM, HP and RedHat to name just a few.

Good Quality Tools, Freely Redistributable

The open source model allows developers to pick and choose the very best components for a particular task from anywhere in the world rather than being constrained to the tools supplied by a particular vendor or having to develop the required components from scratch. It is a well known fact that most of the world’s websites run on Open Source software and that even companies such as Yahoo! and Google rely heavily on open source to provide their services. By choosing an open source approach the development team has access to many of the same sets of tools which power the world’s most popular websites. These tools give the developer a major head-start towards producing the first prototype.

Flexibility During the Prototyping

Expectations can quickly change as the prototype develops. As a consequence the set of tools which were considered the best fit for requirements at the start of the prototyping process might not be the best tools half way through. If a team had chosen a proprietary set of tools the cost of change involved with choosing a new vendor and negotiating new licenses could be prohibitive but in an open source model, since all the tools are freely available, the team is simply able to change to other tools and software as needed without becoming encumbered in licensing issues.

Choice Going Forward

At the end of the prototyping phase all the code produced by the prototyping team, together with the open source tools used, can be given to the main project team without licensing restrictions. This means that the main team is able to re-use useful portions of the code and the tools on which they rely if they choose to do so. Since there are many companies which support open source software there would be no requirement to use the same company for the main development phase as was used for the prototype. As a result, future development is not tied in to one vendor from the start. In turn this gives the project team more flexibility to choose the most appropriate partner for later stages of the project.

Interesting links:
Why Open Source Software? Look at the Numbers!
Browser usage stats

I went to the Identity 2.0 mashup at BT by St Pauls yesterday as part of my commitment to try to get more involved in the London start-up scene. I met some very friendly people including Ian Forrester, Stephan Tual and Paul Walsh and was pleased to catch up with Simon Willison and Natalie Downe.

Although I’m approaching the issue of digital identity from a technical point of view most people who attended were looking at it from a business perspective and frankly seemed a bit behind the times. Overall I was surprised at just how much disagreement there was about about the various concepts surrounding identity. It still means very different things to different people and whilst there was a general sense that OpenID is likely to play a major role in a future identity system for the web, no-one seemed quite sure how. Many people I talked to still had concerns about the basic concepts of the technology and whether it was even secure enough to be able to adopt in real commercial systems.

I still have a lot of faith in OpenID but the one thing that seems clear is that OpenID in its current form isn’t workable for the needs of most businesses. Whilst companies may be willing to provide OpenIDs they aren’t so keen on accepting them to grant access to systems where users have any sort of sensitive data like phone numbers or addresses. Of course at the moment OpenID isn’t really aimed at those markets but I don’t think it can really take off until it is.

Anyway, here are some of the points that stuck in my mind:

• Your identity is worth £85,000 to a fraudster - not because that’s what you have in your account but because that is how much credit they could get by pretending to be you.
• The value of your identity to a business is not in your identity itself but their ability to tie up different pieces of information about you in order to provide more focussed advertising or marketing.
• Potential revenue sources from digital identity are closely related to being able to provide solutions to areas of risk.
• About 55% of the “UK digital mainstream” are concerned about identity but only 4% do anything about it - a consumer product which was capable of saying “protects you from identity theft” would therefore be likely to sell nicely the same way household shredders do at the moment.
• For consumers identity isn’t an intellectual issue, it is an emotive issue.
• Finding language to describe digital identity to ordinary people is a key challenge but at the same time if we were all used to using a digital identity we wouldn’t need a language to describe it. After all, most people don’t know what a URL is but they can tell you their myspace page.

As an aside. I’ve had £700 stolen from my account over the last few days by a fraudster withdrawing cash from cashpoints in Milan. I still have my card so the person must have been using a clone. The experience has made me even more aware about of the flaws in current digital identity systems and the risks involved if they fail.